Tuesday, May 28, 2019

KublaCon 2019 Convention Report

Another KublaCon has come and gone along with a weekend full of top notch miniature gaming.

The Toulon Harbor crew ready for action!

I continue to be impressed with the quality of miniature gamers that show up at KublaCon.  Across the board we had great players throughout all of our games - which as a GM makes running the games much easier.

Here's is what we ran:

  • Battle of Roncevaux Pass - This is a scenario Roy Scaife put together.  28mm Napoleonic game with British, Spanish and Portuguese fighting against the French.
  • Battle for the Forest Moon of Endor - 32mm Star Wars Bolt Action (Legion).  Dan Kerrick brought this battle to life.  Rebels have landed on the forest moon of Endor to bring down the shield generator that is protecting the orbiting Death Star.
  • Charge of the Haradrim - 28mm Lord of the Rings SBG.  I expanded scenario covering the Mûmaks charging against the Rohan forces just after they've run through the ranks of Orcs laying siege to Minas Tirith.  I add more Riders of Rohan and Royal Guard, as well as Haradrim Raiders and Mahûd Raiders.
  • Toulon Harbor - Adam Clark, Roy Scaife and myself came together to run this 1:300 (6mm) Napoleonic sail game.  The British occupation of the port of Toulon is no longer tenable as Napoleon has captured 2 of the 3 forts covering the harbor.  The British are breaking out against a combined French and Spanish fleet.

In addition to the above games ... we pulled out the ships on Friday night after the Roncevaux Pass game and played a smaller engagement just for some ad-hoc fun.  Tons of pictures presented in the order of the games being played at the con below.


Battle of Roncevaux Pass

This is a great game that has the French coming through two openings in the Roncevaux Pass to meet a combine force of British, Portuguese and Spanish.  While a meeting engagement, the French pushed a little too early and it ended up costing them dearly in the long run.  British victory.

This is a scenario where it is critical for the French to create a defensive line with their leading divisions until the rearward division can catch up, pass through and make their assault.

Pictures below ... first my fancy SLR camera ... then phone :-)

















Phone pictures ...








Pictures below courtesy of Alan Sissenwein (thanks Alan!) ...
















Battle for the Forest Moon of Endor

Dan Kerrick ran this SPECTACULAR game.  Really, this game captured the "forest moon" really well.  Both sides fought over a central bunker that housed the control room for the shield generator.  The Rebel scouts pushed early and quickly gained the bunker - then dug in like ticks!  The Imperial forces advanced too cautiously and didn't regain the bunker.  Rebel win.

My highlight was Chewbacca jumping up out of the forest and firing his bowcaster in overload to take down an AT-ST --- I needed a 5+ to-hit (success), then a 6 to damage (success) and then rolled a 5 to take it down.  The other great point was when the Ewok ambush was sprung.  Hilarious.

We used Boba Fett --- he selected a Rebel character to kill for extra VPs.  He choose Han Solo.  Unfortunately he didn't get close enough to take out Solo so failed to collect his bounty.





























































Phone pictures ...































Charge of the Haradrim

Love some of the "table level" pictures I got of this game.  It's always hard to capture that aspect of games when you take pictures.  Pictures at "eye" level don't do many of our games justice when you see the details or sheer number of figures involved.

I should have had the Haradrim cavalry deploy in front of the Mumaks ... or at least in between ... putting them behind was a disadvantage for the Haradrim.  Will correct that in the next run through the game.  I've also decided to add Easterling and Khandish forces for the next round of this game.

Rohan pulled out a victory at the end of the day ... although the Haradrim did much better than before since the supporting cavalry helped.






















Phone pictures ...





















Toulon Harbor

Finally we see Toulon Harbor here.  Managed to get a full 16 players for this EPIC game.  Actually it was 20 if you count Dan, Roy, Adam and myself helping run the game and forts.

Doing sum splain'in!

Anyways, this was a grand game that ran along smoothly.  I'm really happy with the rules and only some minor things need some cleanup before I call them really solid to play.

I have taken the Volleyfire lights from Warlord Games and I use them for broadsides and forts to create a nice effect during the game ... video of that below (direct YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1DPB1cISg)


The British managed to pull out a victory at the last minute with a lucky critical hit on a French 3rd rate that had it's powder magazine explode!  A hard fought and close game.

























































Finally, we played a smaller "ad-hoc" game on Friday night ... some pictures of that below ...










So there you have it.  Hope you enjoyed the pictures of the games.

31 comments:

  1. Just incredible!
    *imagine a GiF of someone with eyes wide open and their jaw dropping here * 😃

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  2. What magnificent photographs Jay. Sensational looking games that you concentrated upon and I did like those clear bases on the Lord of the Rings table. I wonder where they got the dead Mumaks?

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    1. Thanks Carlo. Those are all the game my grpup ran ... didn't take pictures of the others.

      Dead Mumaks are from Small Scenics ... sold through Facebook.

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  3. Wow, Endor game looks great! Can you share your Ewok rules w/ me as a fellow SW Bolt Action Ewok GM? How many of us are there?

    Cheers, Rob in Houston TX

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    1. They are rsted as inexoerienced woth hand weapons. They recycle a limited number of times. They also can ambush from aby unoccupied forest.

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  4. Thanks for the great photo journal of the battles and festivities.

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  5. Incredible report!!! So many photos :)
    I particularly love the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings displays... The ambience makes it for me eheh

    Cheers

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  6. Beautiful games - that Peninsula one especially is really gorgeous!

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  7. You guys put on some fabulous games! I’m sure you’re players were appreciative of all the effort. Simply grand. I had to miss Kubla this year due to stuff and seeing the pics just rubs salt in the wound. lol. 😀

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    1. It was a ton of fun ... jammed a lot into a short period of tome. Noticed we didn't see you sround, hopefully next year. Thanks Stew! :-)

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    2. I’m flattered you would even notice I was absent. 😀

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    3. Or maybe we'll see you at PacifiCon or DundraCon :-)

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  8. I always like the how your projects come out. It looked like another fantastic convention for you all.

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    1. Thanks David, we all appreciate the work you do! :-)

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  9. I had a great time losing horribly as one of the Imperial commanders on Endor. Thank you for bringing such great games to the con, and giving me the chance to participate. Our dice-rolling was pathetic, but it certainly played true to the movies! :-D

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    1. Thanks for playing! You can only really blame the training from the stormtrooper academy ;-) lol Pew pew

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  10. Jeez Jay; why only four games? And did Kerrick plant real trees on the star wars offering? But you do look good in a bicorn, Hornblower :-)

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    1. Lol, technically 5 games if you count the Friday night ad-hoc ship game :-) Dan got those trees from a guy in Australia. PVC pipes ... something we could easily reproduce here :-) lol, that's my Napoleon bicorn turned sideways, multi-use ;-)

      Thanks Steve! :-)

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  11. That Naps game is astonishingly high quality. Chapeau!

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  12. Games just gorgeous! Everything looks very cool! Especially the Napoleonic Wars. And the sea battle!

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  13. Hello, I just came across your blog- about four years late! The 1/300 forts are fantastic. Any chance they would be for sale? scootercee@gmail.com

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    1. The forts are a great addition to the tabletop. Unfortunately they are not for sale though - we love them :-)

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  14. Thank you for the reply! No worries, I can understand as they are very nice. Any "how to" articles on the making of any of the forts? Maybe I'll give it a try.

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    1. Those were built by Adam Clark ... you can see some pictures here: https://adam-clark.com/terrain/toulon-harbour-forts/ He has a laser cutter and makes them out of MDF and thick paper his cuts texture into.

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